Didi setzt weiterhin groß auf Fahrerlose Automatisierung, nachdem es bereits über 10 Milliarden Yuan an unabhängiger Finanzierung aufgebracht hat.
Receives another 2 billion yuan in financing, Didi Autonomous Driving firmly adheres to the "capital - intensive" model.
On October 11th, Didi Autonomous Driving announced the completion of a Series D financing, with the total financing amount reaching 2 billion yuan. The investors include the Zhongguancun Science City Technology Growth Fund, the Beijing Information Industry Development Investment Fund, the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, GAC Group, the Guangzhou Guanghua Fund, and Didi.
The funds will be used to strengthen AI research and development, promote the implementation of L4 autonomous - driving applications, and thus support the high - quality growth of the transportation industry.
From the perspective of the investors, the participation of state - owned investment funds from Beijing and Guangzhou provides Didi with strong state - backed support. This is not only a high recognition of Didi's technological accumulation but also offers a valuable and important validation opportunity for the capital - intensive model of "self - developed technology + cooperation with automakers + commercial operation" chosen by Didi.
As one of the largest mobility companies in China and globally, Didi has completed at least five rounds of financing in the field of autonomous driving, with the total financing amount exceeding 10 billion yuan. This sends a clear signal: Didi wants to be involved in autonomous driving businesses such as robotaxis and robot trucks.
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From vehicle manufacturing and autonomous driving to autonomous driving
After the ride - hailing war, Didi emerged as the winner, and its leading position is extremely stable. Didi is also thinking about and planning its future direction.
As early as 2016, Didi started planning for autonomous driving and established a research team for autonomous driving.
At the same time, Didi also explored the possibility of vehicle manufacturing and successively attempted to cooperate with companies in the automotive industry such as Li Auto and BYD. Later, it even considered manufacturing vehicles independently, but all these attempts did not achieve the expected results.
It was not until August 2023, when Didi sold its intelligent electric vehicle assets to XPeng, that its future planning clearly shifted to the fields of robotaxis and unmanned trucks.
Didi and XPeng signed a strategic cooperation agreement in August 2023
However, Didi is rather reserved and has not made much information public in the field of autonomous driving. Its few public appearances mainly took place at a public autonomous driving day in April 2023, the GAC Technology Day 2025, and the GAC Intelligent Safety Summit.
In April 2023, at the first public autonomous driving day, Didi officially presented the concept robotaxi vehicle DiDi NEURON and the industry's first operation and maintenance center for autonomous driving - Huiju Port.
The new vehicle, which is Didi's first customized vehicle for autonomous driving, is equipped with 21 cameras, 8 LiDAR sensors, and 6 millimeter - wave radar sensors. The driver's seat has been removed to maximize the passenger space. In addition, the Neuron has a unique mechanical arm inside the vehicle, which is the "housekeeper" in the era of autonomous driving and provides services such as carrying luggage, handing out water, and waking up passengers.
The DiDi NEURON concept vehicle
In April this year, at the GAC Technology Day 2025 and the GAC Intelligent Safety Summit, Didi presented the 4.0 hardware platform for autonomous driving. This is the industry's first mass - produced, three - domain integrated central computing center for vehicles, which integrates the intelligent driver assistance domain, the passenger compartment domain, and the communication and navigation domain, and has higher performance and lower latency. The GPU computing power of this computing platform exceeds 2,000 TOPS, and the CPU has 48 cores. The sensor connectivity is doubled compared to the previous computing platform. In addition, the hardware integration and assembly efficiency are significantly improved, the usable volume of the trunk is increased by 88%, the costs are reduced by 74%, and the assembly efficiency is increased by seven times.
In terms of implementation, in early 2023, Didi Autonomous Driving established China's first 24/7 operation and maintenance center for autonomous driving - Huiju Port, which can automatically meet the vehicle's requirements during operation. The vehicle can start automatically, accept orders, and return to the port. Robots can also intelligently wash, charge, inspect, repair, maintain, and park the vehicle. The automation rate of the entire process has already reached 90%.
In September this year, the autonomous vehicle jointly developed by Didi Autonomous Driving and GAC Aion completed the summer tests in Turpan. Through repeated tests under adverse conditions such as continuous heat, strong sunlight, complex road conditions, and high loads, the thermal management system, the high - and low - voltage power supply system, the sensor set, the air - conditioning system, and the range always showed stable and reliable performance. This L4 vehicle is scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2025 and then used for demonstration purposes in cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou.
In addition to the passenger transportation business, Didi is also extending its L4 autonomous driving technology to the fields of long - distance transportation and freight. It established a subsidiary called Karl Power, which provides autonomous truck freight services. As early as 2023, Karl Power carried out regular test operations between Tianjin and Inner Mongolia.
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The cooperation with GAC will be continuously deepened
During Didi's development of autonomous driving, GAC Group has been actively involved and has established a deep bond at both the industrial and capital levels.
In 2019, Didi's autonomous driving department was upgraded to an independent company and officially started large - scale financing.
Didi Autonomous Driving completed its first round of financing in 2020, led by the SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with the financing amount exceeding 500 million US dollars (about 3.568 billion yuan). In 2021, the company completed another round of financing of 300 million US dollars (about 2.14 billion yuan), with investors including well - known institutions such as IDG Capital, CPE, and Paulson.
Since then, the cooperation between Didi and GAC has become increasingly closer. In 2023, Didi Autonomous Driving successfully received a financing of 149 million US dollars (about 1.063 billion yuan). The investors were GAC Capital and the Guangzhou Development Zone Investment Group.
In October last year, Didi Autonomous Driving's team completed another Series C financing of 298 million US dollars (about 2.126 billion yuan). The lead investor was GAC Group.
Together with the newly obtained financing of 2 billion yuan, the state - owned investment funds from Beijing and Guangzhou, as well as GAC, are investing again. Currently, the total financing amount of the five publicly announced financing rounds of Didi Autonomous Driving has already exceeded 10 billion yuan, and the estimated post - investment enterprise value may possibly exceed the mark of 5 billion US dollars.
The participation of state - owned investment funds provides Didi with important state - backed support, which reflects both the state's support for the autonomous driving industry and the official recognition of its technological strength, industrial ecosystems, and implementation capabilities.
Source: Network data processing
The industrial cooperation between Didi and GAC started earlier than the capital cooperation.
As early as 2021, Didi Autonomous Driving signed a strategic cooperation with GAC Aion and discussed the joint - venture and cooperation model in the field of intelligent vehicles. It also planned to jointly present an L4 or higher - level mass - produced vehicle for autonomous driving.
With GAC's increasing investment in Didi, the industrial cooperation between the two parties is also continuously deepening.
In May 2023, the two parties announced the "AIDI Plan" and announced the establishment of a joint - venture. In April 2024, the joint - venture "Guangzhou Andi Technology Co., Ltd." was officially established, with both parties holding 50% of the shares each. The chairman of the board will be Zhang Xiong, the deputy general manager of GAC Aion, and the general manager will be Meng Xing, the COO of Didi Autonomous Driving.
At the Shanghai Auto Show in April this year, the L4 robotaxi vehicle jointly developed by the two parties was presented for the first time. This vehicle is equipped with Didi's latest hardware platform and has 33 sensors, including LiDAR sensors, cameras, and 4D millimeter - wave radar sensors, to enable 360° detection of all driving situations. The new 4D millimeter - wave radar uses the latest radar chip technology, which quadruples the performance. It can also continue to detect efficiently under adverse weather conditions such as rain and snow.
The goal of this cooperation is clear. In the continuously expanding robotaxi sector, both parties leverage their strengths and prepare early for the upcoming great opportunities.
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Two paths for mobility companies in the field of autonomous driving
Among the companies that enter the robotaxi field as mobility companies, Didi Autonomous Driving is the only company that conducts complete self - development. This leads to a big difference between Didi and companies such as Uber and Lyft.
The cooperation model of Uber and Lyft
As representatives of mobility platforms, Uber and Lyft have chosen the safest light - capital approach. After spending high costs on self - development in the early stage and experiencing setbacks, they have fully adopted the model of cooperating with third - party autonomous driving companies.
Uber has cooperated with companies such as Waymo, Motional, Pony.ai, and WeRide and integrated the robotaxi service into its mobility platform.
Lyft has also integrated the autonomous vehicles of these companies into its mobility network through cooperation with technology companies such as Motional, May Mobility, Ford, and its partner Argo AI (historical cooperation), as well as Luobo Kuaipao.
In this model, Uber and Lyft provide access to traffic and operation scenarios, while technology companies provide autonomous driving solutions. The advantages of this model are obvious: mobility companies do not have to bear huge R & D expenses but can quickly expand the reach of the robotaxi service and enrich their product portfolio.
However, the limitations of this model are also clear. The core technology and transportation capacity are in the hands of the partners, which weakens their bargaining power in the industrial chain and narrows the profit margin. More importantly, if all platforms offer similar robotaxi services, the mobility platforms will fall into the trap of homogeneous competition again.
Didi's self - development model
On the technical level, Didi adheres to complete self - development.